Wednesday, January 9th 2013
A list that can and should take precedence over my work list at times. Even if we got stymied at the nap.
I used to have a colleague who thought it was funny to yell “back to work!” whenever he saw me. He would regale me, a young, breastfeeding assistant professor with an infant in tow and a 750 student course, with tales of when he was an assistant professor and would work all day, come home to the kids, and then go back into the office to work after tucking them in. He reminded me that weekends were for research, and holidays were when to really kick into high gear. This advice and teasing came from a very good place, as he wanted to see me hit the ground running and succeed in my job.
I made myself very unhappy those first few years of my job trying to be like this professor: setting aside my life, working during breaks, pumping breastmilk and not getting a lot of sleep. I would go to the East Coast during breaks to see my family and try to get them to watch my child while I sat in front of my computer, miserable. Or if I didn’t get that childcare, I’d spend the day alternately stewing or freaking out about the work I was not doing.
I’m in my fifth year working as an assistant professor. Over three thousand students taught, close to twenty grant proposals rejected (and a few funded). Mistakes, failures, successes, and an increasing degree of frustration over the overwork narratives we construct about academic lives, and the underwork narratives perceived by those outside of higher education.
A few months ago, I was thinking on this colleague and it occurred to me that this person whose life I had modeled mine after was different from me in a few notable ways. He was male, of course. He had gotten tenure years ago, in a different funding climate and with different expectations for tenure. But most importantly, he had a stay at home wife who cared for their children, which freed him to set his schedule almost however he wanted and to work many more hours than is possible for me, as I am one member of a two-professor household.
From there, I realized two things: not only was it unreasonable for me to try and live my life this way, but if he was working that many hours when funding and tenure were easier to obtain, then today’s professors are well and truly screwed.
A raw deal
Many people have been disappointed in Susan Adams’s Forbes column that described being a professor as the least stressful job. David Kroll, Emily Willingham and Scicurious, themselves major players in academia (Kroll has gotten tenure twice as a science professor and is currently a writing professor, Willingham is also a former science professor, Sci is a brilliant and hardworking neuroscience postdoc), have written important responses to her piece on structural and personal levels. Go read them first, you won’t be disappointed. Adams herself has written an addendum and responded to many comments to her post. (Edited to add: Missed one and probably many others! Here is a response by Dr. Isis).
To be honest, I have had a hard time writing this post because I am feeling rather ambivalent about academia these days. I have seen a lot of bad behavior lately, and most of that bad behavior comes from everybody freaking out about how few resources there are to go around.
There is a zero sum attitude that is wearing me out – if you have something, then it means I don’t have that thing, and now suddenly I want that thing so I will do whatever necessary to keep you from having it. Some examples:
- Departments are so strapped for money that they are competing with each other for students, because most universities allocate department funds by how many students they teach. I’ve heard of some departments ending all cross-listed courses to force their majors to only take their classes, of faculty without expertise in an area of high student interest being forced to create classes in these topics, even when faculty with this expertise exist in other departments. Class sizes are growing, and relief from high teaching loads is harder to get than ever.
- Service obligations are increasing. Some of this growth is not happening in a thoughtful way as part of a long-range plan, but as a result of a system that is struggling to breathe. If you are drowning, you will grab on to any possible financial or status-increasing opportunity in the hope that one of them will be the piece of driftwood that will help you get just a few more gulps of air.
- States are behind in payments to public universities, and have been for years. Out of a sense of survival, tuition has increased quite a bit at my university, which has led to more than one student reminding me that they pay my salary and they deserve some particular grade (strangely, it’s always higher than the one they are getting). But don’t we all do this? The more we pay for a service, the more we expect in return.
- Many public universities are also increasing international admissions. These students are admitted because they can pay a lot of money. The increase in these students is rarely met with an adequate increase in resources to help them thrive at college.
- Finally, this funding climate affects our research. We are all trying to make do with less money – that means a reduced animal model, or fewer participants recruited. The statistical power of our research is worsened, and sometimes we can’t actually perform enough of our research to determine, for instance, if null results are true or false negatives. We can’t hire as many undergrads or pay for grad students to attend conferences, which worsens their academic preparation. And we are applying to more grants than ever in the hope that one of them hits, which overloads review panels and thus, again, increases service obligations.
We professors got a raw deal. Everyone and everything – students, taxpayers, politicians, science and technology, the advancement of knowledge, saving patients’ lives – that is affected by higher education is also getting a raw deal. It is insane to continue to operate under ever-worsening conditions, doing the same kind of policing and simply increasing our stress and workload.
Unless politicians and taxpayers understand that pushing more kids than ever into college without an equal rise in higher education funding leads to an education with less meaning, unless they understand that laboratories are closing and only certain kinds of scientists willing to put up with the harsh realities of this environment, unless they realize we are giving young people very little to aspire to and dream about when we don’t put money into science and education, whatever it is that higher education is going to morph into in the coming years is not going to be rich, engaging, meaningful or produce research or students that change the world.
So we need to change the minds of folks outside of academia (those like Susan Adams with the half-knowledge that Sci describes). And we need to stop drinking our own Kool Aid.
Unless…
You all will have to forgive me. Over winter break, my daughter watched The Lorax. A lot. And while the film adaptation leaves a lot to be desired (and adds a hefty dose of sexism absent from the book), it does contain one of my favorite lines ever:
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.
I care a whole awful lot. If you’re reading this, you likely do too. I care about my field site, I miss my friends and colleagues and research participants in Poland that I haven’t seen for years because I don’t have the money. I care about the research questions I want to ask in my new local project despite the considerable, maddening obstacles in my way. I care about my students actually having a different experience that is less disappointing than college turned out to be for them. I care about faculty having fuller lives than ones where giving up everything we love is romanticized or enforced.
Maybe, like me, you don’t have tenure or some major administrative position at your institution that can influence policy. Maybe you don’t have a faculty job, but want one someday. I don’t think any of us should wait for some magical moment when we have more power to try and affect change. If we can’t have these jobs and remain human and true to the things that are important to us, I’m not sure the point of these jobs.
I think that is the single, major luxury afforded us, the one way in which Susan Adams was right. We have autonomy, no matter how much the funding climate may make us feel otherwise. We can decide to be different. That doesn’t mean that doing so doesn’t have consequences, but when is doing the right thing a risk-free endeavor?
Figure out how you want this job to look, recognizing whatever constraints you feel you need to recognize (say, a certain number of publications before tenure), and negotiating the others (maybe a certain amount of funding achieved, or a particular class size). Most of the things important to you should be negotiable. If they’re not, you can put together a thoughtful plan, choose to live your life the way you think is right anyway, and see how it goes.
It might not work. Or it might not be sustainable. Or you might be encouraged to do things differently. But if we don’t model something different, not only will we not be the people we want to be as we age, we won’t provide models for all those younger, cooler, motivated, curious, bright, innovative people who are looking to us to figure out what to do with their lives. We can encourage them to be academics, but also writers, entrepreneurs, coaches, novelists, creators, artists, independent scientists.
Just by being exactly who we want to be.
So just who, exactly, are you?
Monday, December 31st 2012
It’s vacation time for Team Family, as my daughter calls us. While we’re skating and skiing, enjoy this repost from my old blog on hormonal contraceptives and mate choice.
Imagine you are a single, heterosexual woman. You meet a nice man at the driving range, or on a blind date. You like him and he likes you. You date, you get engaged, you get married. You decide to have a child together, so you go off the pill. One morning you wake up and look at your husband, and it’s like seeing him through new eyes. Who is this stranger you married, and what did you ever see in him?
After an article made the news when it suggested mate preferences change on hormonal contraception, this seemed to be the scenario in the heads of many women. Is my pill deceiving me? What if my birth control is making me date the wrong man?
Several articles over the years have demonstrated that women prefer men with more masculine features at midcycle, or ovulation, and more feminine features in less fertile periods. Based on body odor, women and men also often prefer individuals with MHC (major histocompatibility complex) that are different from theirs, which may be a way for them to select mates that will give their offspring an immunological advantage. These findings have been replicated a few times, looking at a few different gendered traits. And as I suggested above, other work has suggested that the birth control pill, which in some ways mimics pregnancy, may mask our natural tendency to make these distinctions and preferences, regarding both masculinity and MHC (Little et al. 2002; Roberts et al. 2008; Wedekind et al. 1995).
On the one hand, I think it’s both interesting and important to consider the implications of the birth control pill beyond just contraception. Hormones are messages, so any cells that have receptors for these messages, like specialized mailboxes, can receive them. The pill is made of synthetic versions of estradiol and progesterone, and there are estradiol and progesterone receptors in your brain. And yes, these hormones do change your brain, both during the natural cycle and on hormonal contraception; Scicurious has written well on this in the past.
On the other hand, I have a lot of questions: First and most important to me, how does any of this translate to non-straight women? I find the constant focus on mate choice between men and women a bit exhausting, and am not sure we can assume non-straight relationships to work the same way. Next, how well do preferences over the cycle map on to actual choices for mates, short term or long term? If we happen to find Brad Pitt more attractive than Justin Bieber at midcycle, does that mean no one will do but Brad Pitt? And finally, what are all the factors that we need to consider in mate choice besides a deep voice or square jawline (again, especially if you try to expand your thinking beyond straight relationships)?
I’ll start with the last two questions that deal with mate preference versus ultimate mate selection. As you all might expect, women and men choose mates for lots of reasons, not just masculinity or complementary immune systems. Bereczkei et al (1997) looked at singles ads and found women often sought mates with high parental care. In a separate singles ad evaluation, Pawlowski and Dunbar (1999) found that women mostly selected men of high resource potential who were interested in long-term relationships (either unlikely to divorce or unlikely to die within twenty years), where men selected women by markers of fecundity (ability to have babies). In a sample of 18-24 year old straight people in the US, Buston and Emlen (2003) found that most people selected mates who had similar characteristics to themselves. And a speed dating sample showed that people under those conditions selected dates based on easily observable traits, like physical attractiveness (Kurzban and Weeden 2005).
Now on to the fact that all of this research is on straight people. I found very little on lesbian women and the menstrual cycle… but what I found was very cool! Brinsmead-Stockham et al (2008) found that, like heterosexual women, lesbian women are quicker to identify unknown faces at midcycle, as long as they were the faces of the sex they preferred. So straight women were good at identifying male faces, lesbian women good at identifying female faces. Burleson et al (2002) found that sexual behavior in lesbian and straight women was mostly similar through the menstrual cycle, with both peaking at midcycle.
So, mate preference may be about telling a research assistant who is the hottest to you at a particular point in your cycle. And it is a fairly robust and consistent finding. However, when it comes to ultimate mate selection the most important thing to consider is a great point made by Pawlowski and Dunbar: finding a mate is about advertising what you have to offer while making known what you want in a mate. Then it’s all about finding some kind of compromise through a series of trade-offs based on what the individual wants, what they can offer, and what’s available in the dating pool. (So, since neither Brad Pitt nor Justin Bieber are currently in the dating pool, my previous comparison was pointless.)
Those of you who met your mate while on the pill: not to fear. I don’t think that the possibility that you may have some suppression of masculinized preferences at one point in your cycle means you’ve chosen the wrong person.
Who knows, it could have opened you up to the Mr. or Ms. Right.
References
Bereczkei T, Voros S, Gal A, and Bernath L. 1997. Resources, Attractiveness, Family Commitment; Reproductive Decisions in Human Mate Choice. Ethology 103(8):681-699.
Brinsmead-Stockham K, Johnston L, Miles L, and Neil Macrae C. 2008. Female sexual orientation and menstrual influences on person perception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44(3):729-734.
Burleson MH, Trevathan WR, and Gregory WL. 2002. Sexual behavior in lesbian and heterosexual women: relations with menstrual cycle phase and partner availability. Psychoneuroendocrinology 27(4):489-503.
Buston PM, and Emlen ST. 2003. Cognitive processes underlying human mate choice: The relationship between self-perception and mate preference in Western society. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100(15):8805-8810.
Kurzban R, and Weeden J. 2005. HurryDate: Mate preferences in action. Evolution and Human Behavior 26(3):227-244.
Little AC, Jones BC, Penton-Voak IS, Burt DM, and Perrett DI. 2002. Partnership status and the temporal context of relationships influence human female preferences for sexual dimorphism in male face shape. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences 269(1496):1095-1100.
Pawlowski B, and Dunbar RIM. 1999. Impact of market value on human mate choice decisions. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences 266(1416):281.
Roberts SC, Gosling LM, Carter V, and Petrie M. 2008. MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275(1652):2715-2722.
Wedekind C, Seebeck T, Bettens F, and Paepke AJ. 1995. MHC-Dependent Mate Preferences in Humans. Proceedings: Biological Sciences 260(1359):245-249.
Friday, December 21st 2012
This here blog is many things — ladybusiness explainer, bad science outer, and a place where I reflect on higher education and the academic life. Today is the last day of the semester here at the U of I, there’s a lovely dusting of snow on everything, and it seemed like a nice time to reflect on what I’ve accomplished on the blog, what it’s meant to me, and sometimes what it means to you.
Also, everybody else is doing it.
Ladybusiness anthropology
Here is some legitimate science on pregnancy and rape. On Todd Akin’s brilliant words about the science of conception. This was the most difficult post I have written from an emotional perspective.
When a beginning is not a beginning. My post on the causes of miscarriage. I wrote it for a friend, and, I think, I wrote it for myself.
Don’t sweat it: premenopausal women, reproductive state, and night sweats. My most recent in-depth science blog post, and it was all about ME. While there weren’t too many men interested in this one, this is a post where I got a surprising number of private messages from other women, relieved I had written about night sweats because they got them too. It also opened up a lot of conversations with friends. This is why it can be hard to measure impact or define metrics for this kind of stuff.
Interrupting claims about natural sexual behavior. I probably should just lay this whole kerfuffle to rest, but I was pleased with my final blog post on Deep Thinking Hebephile at the beginning of the year. Whenever anyone evaluates claims about behavior, in evolutionary psych or in other fields, I do hope they remember to keep these tenets of evolutionary theory in mind and test hypotheses against them.
Nutty science
Llama, llama, get with mama: the magical semen ingredient that makes the ladies swoon (then ovulate). I wasn’t debunking anything in this post, which is often the case when I write funnier stuff (well, funnier to me). I just thought it was a great topic, and led to a lot of puns that nauseated adults who either are about my age and therefore saw the same Sesame Street episodes, or have children of their own and are familiar with a current children’s book series. I never said this blog was for everyone!
Hot for Obama, but only when this smug married is not ovulating. On that unfortunate study on voting behavior and ovulation that didn’t measure ovulation.
An academic life
Impostors, the culture of science, and fulfilling our potential. My follow-up post to Sci Foo on the impostor syndrome I and others felt. I was glad to hear that it resonated with a lot of people. I hope we all hold a picture of reality in our heads whenever those ugly feelings come up.
Which came first, rewarding outreach or doing it? On chickens, eggs, and overworked scientists. This was my contribution to a broader conversation on the impact of outreach, and whether it does or should “count” in an academic career.
I can out interdiscipline you: anthropology and the biocultural approach. I was intentionally a bit snarky in this post, to try and get at what it is about some of anthropology’s interdisciplinary work that irks me. Since this post, I have been the reviewer for some amazing interdisciplinary work between biological and cultural anthro. Could it be because of this very post??? Correlation equals causation, yes? Or not.
Finally, a big thank you
Thanks readers, for being here, for supporting me, for being brilliant, interesting people in your own right, and being the kind of people who are eager to learn new things and make the world a better place. Thanks to my allies and friends online and off. Thanks to all those academics who tell me they secretly read me even if it’s not cool for academics to read blogs.
And of course, thanks to my family who have the patience to give me the space to write. Every time I tell my husband something good about my science writing (from “someone with lots more followers retweeted me!” to “I got an honorarium for that speaking gig about the blog!” to “an agent wants to represent me!”), he is delighted. And convinced that some day I am going to write a best seller that allows us to retire to Hawaii.
We can keep him in the dark about what it means to be kinda a little semi-known within a small sub-circle of the science blogosphere, though, because the delight never gets old.
